WUNRN
Policy Review Magazine
CULTURE OF FEMALE SERVICE - Why do so many businesswomen and entrepreneurs not have a robust
sense of their financial value?
By Rosjke Hasseldine
Many women
entrepreneurs and small business owners struggle to admit their top hourly
rates. Instead they end up giving their time and skills free or for much less
than they’re worth.
The Greater Return on
Women’s Enterprise (GROWE) report, published in November last year,
suggests women need practical support to overcome these confidence issues. It
cites last July’s Myths
and Realities of Women’s Access to Finance report by the Women’s
Enterprise Task Force (WETF) that suggested, amongst other things, that schools
should teach financial skills to help women feel confident about money.
But reports such as these will not uncover the issue because of how they get
their information. Women need to feel safe and heard within a trusted
relationship before they will share what feels very personal to them. The
secrecy surrounding this issue means many do not realise that they are very
definitely not alone.
Facilitating my Women’s Power Circles makes me realise how many women lack any
sense of entitlement about being paid well for their time and skills. It is
also obvious that the more men there are within a service or profession, the
more confident women are about asking to be paid well.
An example: a self-employed woman counsellor - an extremely female-dominated
service industry - tends to have more difficulty putting forward her hourly
rate than a self-employed IT consultant. Another example, this time within more
comparable industries: a self-employed counsellor is more likely to “choke”
when saying her hourly rate than a life coach, especially a business coach.
Life and business coaching attract far more men than counselling. Counsellors
tend to charge much less than coaches and, as a study in New Zealand suggests,
male counsellors on average charge $10 more an hour than their female
colleagues – something that I am believe also happens in the UK.
The GROWE report gives positive statistics on how much women contribute to the
economy, but it fails to discover just why women do not have a robust sense of
their financial value. The path to answering this lies in what I call “the
culture of female service”.
For generations, women’s nurturing has been treated as something they should
want to do free. And now that women are building much-needed businesses based
on their nurturing skills, society hasn’t caught up with how fundamentally
sexist it is to expect them to give their skills and time free or for less pay,
even though their jobs require the same investment in training. The banking
industry, for example, is seen as “deserving” a higher hourly return than
teaching, when both require an undergraduate degree. Why?
If the economy is going to really value all its contributors, Government policy
and resources need to address this imbalance, sexism and historical
undervaluing of women’s contribution.
Many businesswomen need to explore how they have internalised this ages-old
attitude, taught how to value their time and skills and to think in terms of
having a return on their investment alongside the nuts and bolts of financial
management.
www.womenspowercircles.com
& www.thesilentfemalescream.com
27 March 2010